Time To Stop The Dive?

They get drilled by double digits, easily. They can barely score 80 pts a game lately. Houston gets to a hundred when they're half sleep. Asik will look like an All Star. Expect Houston to have tons of points in the paint and the Sixers to be streaky on long twos. Advantage Rockets, it should be a cake walk for them in the 4th quarter.

Sixers showing a few vertebrae of a spine would be nice though. Still pissed at how they folded on the last two possessions in that Toronto game and walked off the floor before time ran out. Hawes' pussyitis appears to have become contagious. Antibiotics needed, quickly. Will find out if they took the proper dosage or skimped on it.

"This team is woefully undermanned, they've got one player who can honestly be described as good or better on the NBA sliding scale, but as a unit, they aren't this bad. No team is as bad as they've played over their past four games."

I think this is where you let your optimism get the better of you, as you tend to do every year when people start calling for tanking. Of course there are teams as bad as we've played the last four games, teams like Charlotte and Washington and Cleveland. And why should we be much better than a team like Cleveland, which also has a great point guard and very little else? As you say, after Jrue we have nothing. We have all the ingredients for a terrible offense, and we don't have the defenders to play good defense. On any given night, there's over an 80% chance that the team we face has more talent than us; only something like 3 to 5 teams have less. And you have no basis to say that as a unit we're more than the sum of our parts, because this unit has never really existed until this season, and back when we were 10-6 we already had a negative scoring margin against a really soft schedule.

Probably guilty as charged on the tanking stuff. Don't think any team in the league is as bad as they've played over the past four, though, and they certainly weren't that bad over the first 34 (except when Jrue was out). I mean, there is a body of work for this team as constructed and they've been playing to their floor, rather than their ceiling. The Cavs are an interesting parallel, I often wonder why Irving can't elevate that roster at all, and why he doesn't get any criticism for that failure.

Lets not forget Irving missed a month. Varejao is injured again. And the rest of their players are even worse than the rest of the Sixers. But most importantly, Collins is much better than Byron Scott.

jrue displaying a ton of leadership tonight. he has stepped up every time they've needed it, from early in the first when houston jumped out to the lead down to that buzzer beater-even if it does get wiped away

if he can play a fourth quarter like the third this might be a career night

wilkins has high basketball iq, always gives effort on d, and has a knack for getting to the line...i'll take it over a no effort chucker who contributes nothing unless his shot is falling and even then, his contributions come atthe exclusion of any sort of offensive cohesiveness

so you'd rather run nick young out there and see the offense grind to a halt while tries to shoot himself into a hot streak?

nick young means your whole offense shifts to nick young style. i'll take a player with less skill offensively who defends and doesn't sabotage the entire offense. six fta's to for wilkins...a little veteran savvy to address a singular achille's heel for the team...god forbid!

my favorite nick young moment was postgame interview after the game on the roadtrip where he shot all eight of the sixers free throws. nick credited his success in getting to the line to his aggressiveness, attacking the basket, etc

six of his eight fta's in the game came when he was fouled shooting a three

Evan Turner couldn't score a single point in the second half against an awful defense after a seemingly hot start. His defense is shit too, Delfino drove by him like he was a statue. Worst +/- on the team tonight by far (-8 in his 34 mins, +15 in the other 12 mins). Please get rid of that fat scrub, I am so sick of watching him play.

Ah..well...let's see...Jrue scored 30 points. Because Turner substitutes ball handling duties when Jrue takes a breather, he probably spends less time on the court when Jrue is playing than the other starters. My guess is that was a major contributing factor to his +/-. Numerical measures have context.

I only saw the end of the 3rd and entire 4th quarter, but I thought his defense was definitely better than it had been in recent weeks. He can play decent defense and he mostly did during his first two years. He just hasn't this year on the whole.

Turner was doing a good job of attacking mismatches in the first half, but got burned by Delfino a bunch of times. It was almost like he didn't play at all in the second half. He did, just no impact at all. Only play I remember is a long pass to Thad. Guess that's better than a bunch of missed shots, though.

That is where Turner needs to start. He was invisible save for a hot streak at a crucial time with Jrue on the bench and his only srcond half contribution was making the most exciting pass of the game. He didn't struggle trying to force things and kill the team. I'll take it.

he didn't take a single shot in the second half, i don't think. maybe one?

not thrilled with that, but he made some pretty great passes. at least he wasn't forcing things. during the one stretch where he was aggressive, he made six straight shots. obviously, you'd like that to be sustained, but it wasn't entirely necessary tonight and he wasn't getting the touches

thought he was a positive in the last three quarters. hopefully by picking his spots he can play himself back into the november/first half of december turner

ah you are correct, all in the third right?no shot attempts in the fourth. i was remembering that stretch early in the third where he missed three shots in short order as having happened late in the second. my mistake

we've seen the results when turner tries to shoot himself out of a funk. i prefer tonight's second half for now. we are trying to build a bridge back to competency here

Weird day in the NBA. Our result, Magic breaking their 10-game losing streak on the road against the Clippers, Washington beating Atlanta by 10, Phoenix beating Chicago by 16 on the road, and Dallas currently up 95-65 against Memphis.

I didn't think we played especially well last night, especially on defense. We basically were saved by Houston's being very cold from three. At the basket, Houston was an astonishing 25-32, just under 80%. That's both a ton of attempts and a ridiculously high conversion rate. But they were 1-13 on long twos and 8-32 from three, something which I don't think we caused; I just saw open shooters missing decent looks. We did force a lot of turnovers, but they're a very turnover-prone team.

if you look at him now compared to him in his rookie season, he is looking knda puffy. considering that collins said after last season that et's offseason goal should be to get in better shape its not all that encouraging

This is the one great offensive performance I can remember this year that was not due to unsustainable jump shooting. They can get the offense they got last night against most of the league. Their best offensive players are suited to an aggressive, uptempo style.

Huge game from Thad, too. It had been way too long since I'd seen this Thad. He NEEDS to run a bit to be effective. He didn't get that contract by shooting eighteen footers off of turgid halfcourt sets.

Lastly, big ups to my man Dougy Fresh for bringing the new...when a coach can recognize what he is doing wrong and make the needed adjustments, it has to make it easier for the players to do so as well.

Tonight Duncan had 12, 9, 5, 3 steals and 7 blocks. Only 5 players (since 1985) had ever done that: Olajuwon, Garnett, Robinson, and Webber. Until today, the oldest player to ever do it was 31 years and 11 months old (Duncan's 36), and it hadn't been done in over 9 years. Almost every night, Duncan becomes the oldest player to have whatever line he has. I guess the moral is that tanking the right year can set a franchise up for the next fifteen.

Crazy that the Sixers had the second pick in that draft. That is all that stood between years of mediocrity and years of success. And i still remember people debating whether Duncan would be anything special in the pros because he played too many years in college and lacked fire.